Author: ArilabAdmin

Out in Nature this week: “The future of hyperdiverse tropical ecosystems”. We were happy to contribute to a broad review of the importance of the hyperdiverse tropics to global biodiversity, ongoing threats to tropical biodiversity, as well as strategies to help mediate those threats. Particularly pleased to see ants being used as an exemplar taxon alongside birds and mammals and the rest, a main goal of our (and many others’) efforts over these last years. This stunning photo was taken by the late Rodrigo Baleia.

We have a new paper out in Zookeys (https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.770.24908) that revises the taxonomy of the very rare and cryptic ant genus Proceratium in China. We recognized 8 species from China and described 3 of them as new to science. The most spectacular species from Yunnan we named Proceratium shohei in honor of Dr. Shohei Suzuki (1979-2016), a marine scientist from OIST who lost his life in a tragic research diving accident. The study was led by our colleague Michael Staab, and included Paco and Cong from the lab, along with Zheng-Hui Xu from China.

This study continues our lab’s line of research integrating x-ray microtomography (micro-CT) scanning, computer-based 3D reconstructions, and several downstream 3D data products (such as 3D surfaces and videos) into ant systematics. We used virtual 3D surface models based on micro-CT scans for in-depth comparative analyses of specimen morphology in order to overcome the difficulties of examining the rare and valuable physical material. Since these ants are extremely hairy, thus often very dirty, we basically “shaved” them virtually.

We have a new paper out in Nature Communications on testing hypotheses for latitudinal gradients in ants. This is the first paper to really present and analyze the full scope of the GABI database of all ant species distributions. To complement the species range data, we did a very extensive phylogenetic and dating analysis, including implementing the fossilized birth-death process with 500 fossil taxa informing the dating. We analyzed the geographic and phylogenetic data together to test hypotheses for the latitudinal gradient, including variation in diversification rate and time. We generally found the latter to be most consistent with explaining the gradient.

We also did a complementary study focusing on Pheidole, which deals with emergence of the gradient on more recent timescales. A preprint of that one is available on bioarxiv.

New paper out on Prenolepis genus group in the Indo-Pacific published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. The study is a collaboration between many of the usual Pacific ants suspects, and was led by our longtime collaborator Milan Janda and his (now former) student Pavel Matos-Maravi. They deftly used complex set of analyses to test a series interesting biogeographic hypotheses. Nice work Pavel and Milan!

A new paper on global macro-invasion dynamics led by Hanno Seebens, Franz Essl, and the GLONAF group has just come out in PNAS. We were happy to contribute our GABI data on alien ant emergence and spread over time. Main punch line is that emergence of new invaders comes from expansion of trade networks and environmental change into new source pools and this keeps the rate of new emergence high. Check it out!